How To Argue For Atheism in Five or More Logical Fallacies

Chris Tognotti teaches Atheists how to respond to five “misconceptions” about Atheism:

COMMON ARGUMENT #1: ATHEISM IS ARROGANT IN ITS CERTAINTY THAT THERE IS NO GOD.
Your Response: Refusing to believe something which has no meaningful supportive evidence, and stating confidently that you don’t, is not arrogant. Let’s say I believe that rocks don’t talk to each other, for example. That can’t be 100 percent proven. If that’s arrogant, I’d have to remain agnostic on the talking rock proposition.

There are undoubtedly individual atheists who are arrogant — a figure like the late Christopher Hitchens, who in writing and public debate was one of the most electrifying atheist speakers in the world, is nonetheless pretty easily indicted of arrogance. But the charge that atheism itself is an arrogant view of life or the universe? Not so much. It’s really a fundamentally unassuming outlook. It begs no immediate answers, and it doesn’t threaten punishment for waiting and seeing.

This answer first asserts the common, unthinking Category Error which infests Atheism. The call for evidence is generally meant to include only physical evidence. And here is the weakest of modifiers: he uses the term “meaningful” to excuse himself from evidence which exists, by demeaning it in advance: the Common Poisoning of the Well Fallacy. He makes the false knowledge claim of knowing that there exists no meaningful evidence; he makes no attempt to back that claim with actual universal knowledge of its truth. It remains an empty claim with no meaningful supporting evidence itself.

But the real charge remains unanswered: the declaration of certainty is a knowledge claim, the claim to know for immutable fact, that there is no deity. That claim is not just arrogant, it is irrational. Such a position is far from his claim to be “unassuming”; in fact it assumes knowledge which the Atheist cannot and does not have: the assumption is blatant and is logically impossible. So the irrationality of the Atheist comes forth immediately. Claiming universal knowledge of non-existence is, in fact, arrogant.

2. ARGUMENT: ATHEISTS HAVE NO MORAL FRAMEWORK.
Your Response: Quite the contrary! There’s a case to be made that the search for moral truth is more important, and more noble, if it’s pursued for its own sake. Claiming that morality is only true or binding if God hands it down to us just isn’t true. Considering many of the world’s major holy books contain divine orders that seem flatly immoral — calls for violence, slavery, sexual discrimination and the like — religion’s claim to absolute morality seems shakier still.“

Here the Atheist both denies the charge and admits it in the very next sentence: internal contradiction. But “searching for moral truth” is not a moral premise, nor is it a moral framework. It demonstrates the actual state of morality for the Atheist: unknown, not actualized, non-existent. Further, whatever the search might find would be personal, not universal; it would be subjective and relativist, not objective and binding.

The further charge against religious morality is a Tu Quoque, and a Red Herring; the issue is being deviated away from the actual issue, which is Atheist morality. Instead, he is changing the subject to something which he thinks he can actually defend, a childish tactic, especially since his comprehension of biblical morality has hardly reached the juvenile level. Plus he cannot prove that it “just isn’t true”, so his claim is merely opinion which is not “supported” (succumbing to the exact fault which he charged in the first argument just above).

3. ARGUMENT: PROMOTING ATHEISM IS ITSELF A FORM OF EVANGELISM.
Your Response: Atheism is not a religion.

Religions are, by definition, statements of belief. Atheism is not a statement of belief — it’s a statement of non-belief. While faith aspires to convince you of an evidence-free assertion, atheism does nothing more than point to it and say “no reason to believe that.” It doesn’t state as fact any claims about the universe it can’t demonstrate in a researched scientific structure. And perhaps most distinctly from faith, it’s comfortable sitting in a space of unknowing.:

This is the tired Atheist dodge which claims not to have religion as part of its religious focus, and which claims further not to have any beliefs, being only “non-belief”. This is so transparently false, that it is an indicator of the length to which Atheists will go in their attempt to (a) deceive and (b) avoid addressing the content of their own belief system. This doesn’t just drip dishonesty, it is a flood of dishonesty.

4. ARGUMENT: ATHEISTS SECRETLY KNOW GOD EXISTS, THEY JUST HATE HIM/HER/IT.
Your Response: Look, Atheists are not blind to the finer joys of life, however much believers sometimes doubt it. Just because we don’t think the significance is supernatural doesn’t mean we’re lying about feeling the presence of God, or are in some state of bitter denial. We really aren’t blithely ignoring fears and concerns we secretly have about eternal judgement. By and large, we don’t believe a word of it.

If somebody tells you they don’t believe in God, try really believing them, and considering how it would affect your perspective if you came to feel as they did.”

First this is no answer in any universe. This actually represents the exact type of subjective “feeling” that Atheists reject in the religious. They see no reason to believe in someone else’s feeling. Why should anyone believe in what they claim their own feelings to be? If their feelings are "necessarily" accurate, but they claim that the feelings of others are not valid, that is the blatant Special Pleading Fallacy. So under their own rules their personal subjective feelings are rejected.

Second, the argument itself is probably too general, yet it certainly applies to a large, very large, segment of the Atheist population. And how are they to respond meaningfully if their protests are not accompanied by meaningful supporting evidence? Another Special Pleading Fallacy.

There are other reasons to turn Atheist which are just as irrational, including the carrot/stick of total moral and intellectual untethered freedom from absolutes (including rational logic) and the freedom from all norms of moral restrictions. And just basic juvenile rebellion, which can and does exist up to the age of 28, when the frontal cortex finally matures.

5. ARGUMENT: TALKING ABOUT ATHEISM IN MIXED COMPANY IS RUDE AND CONDESCENDING.
Your Response: If I told you I didn’t like your favorite movie, or the politician you voted for, it might irritate you, but it would probably still be a conversation starter — not a conversation ender.

This doesn’t work as neatly with religion, which makes sense. It’s really, really vulnerable to have faith in God in an age of advanced scientific discovery. As such, it’s damn near impossible to make the case for Atheism without it being quite hurtful to the believer. It doesn’t just sound like “everything you believe most deeply is untrue,” it is precisely a belief in that.

Here’s a deal we can strike: I promise not to get too riled up if you’re into a God who’d send me to hell … if you promise not to freak out that I think Jesus stayed dead. Can we shake on that?

Glad we talked.”

And here the Atheist-Scientismist arrogance leaks out all over the place, making it very slippery for the Atheist-Scientismist. First, the Atheist cannot hold religious conversations, because of the charges he makes next:

”. It doesn’t just sound like “everything you believe most deeply is untrue,” it is precisely a belief in that.”

If this isn’t the precise essence of modern Atheism, it at least is very close to the core. With no evidence of his own, no possibility of evidence of his own, yet demanding evidence which he demeans in advance as not meaningful, the Atheist takes the – maximally arrogant – position stated just above. To wit: everything that YOU believe in is untrue, as if the Atheist has some special knowledge of Truth, existence and the source of life. This is another knowledge claim, regarding knowledge which the Atheist cannot and specifically does not have. Yet this is the rigid position which for the Atheist serves as his "Truth", and which makes him superior to the non-Atheist and therefore unable to converse civilly with one. The irrationality is obvious.

Atheists want tolerance for their non-moral lifestyle while attacking religions relentlessly. Atheism has a documented track record in the history of world communities of Atheism-based social systems. These have shown the degree of amorality and irrationality which infests Atheism when it gains power. It is not pretty and it is not utopia and it is not rational.